Padres can't complete sweep against Tigers
The Padres’ Ha-Seong Kim and Tigers second baseman Andy Ibanez watch a throw to first base that completes a double play during the fifth inning of Sunday’s game.
The Padres won another series but lost another chance.
A 3-1 loss to the Tigers on Sunday was the second straight series in which the Padres fell short of a three-game sweep by losing the final game.
How this one happened was confounding, even for a group that has pushed the boundaries of what was previously thought to be disappointing.
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“We’ve seen this game before, and these are key games,” manager Bob Melvin said afterward. “This is a key game today, to go out with a little bit more fire. Now, look, when you don’t hit, it doesn’t look great. But I just felt like we should have done a little more damage.”
Melvin’s exasperation owed primarily to the Padres having been shut out on one hit over six innings by Alex Faedo, who was called up from Triple-A on Sunday and had never in his previous 18 big-league starts turned in a scoreless outing or allowed fewer than three hits.
“Six shutout innings and I didn’t think he was like a (Max) Scherzer-type,” shortstop Xander Bogaerts said. “It was a very comfortable six innings for him. It seemed that way. But I felt like our hitters were also comfortable in the box, but maybe we just didn’t execute the way we wanted to and maybe lock down. He didn’t have anything, like, (Justin) Verlander-esque or Sandy Alcantra or something like that. So it’s definitely one that is tougher than when you face guys like that.”
In the moment, the poor performance by the Padres offense may have overshadowed the bigger picture of the blown opportunity.
“I think it was more about today, to tell you the truth, and it’s a pretty disappointing effort, at least off the starter,” Melvin said. “I mean, you give him credit. He somehow got us out, nothing against him. But we gotta have a better approach. We gotta put more pressure on the starter, in my opinion.”
But it is late enough in the season that there is not only the little picture on which to focus.
“If we want to get where we want to get,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said, “stuff like this cannot be happening.”
With the passing of their 100th game of the season, the Padres (48-52) will begin a homestand Monday six games back in the race for the National League’s final wild-card spot.
The 62 games remaining afford the Padres ample time to make up the necessary ground. They gained two games just by going 4-2 this past week.
But moving up significantly in the standings, they know, will almost certainly require them putting together at least one sustained winning streak.
Sunday was an opportunity to win a third straight game for the seventh time this season. A victory would have put them in position to win a fourth straight game for the first time this season.
The Padres are one of three teams to have not put together a winning streak of at least four games. The other two are the Royals, whose longest win streak is two games, and Nationals, who have not won more than three in a row. Those two teams have the second-worst records in their respective leagues.
It is in this context that it was difficult to feel good about a 5-5 trip, which would otherwise not be considered all that bad a result after losing three of the first four games.
“We’re way past trips and series,” Melvin said. “It’s all about winning games. Today was a key game for us.”
It was lost despite another quality start, as Padres starter Joe Musgrove wasn’t quite as effective as he had been for two straight months and the offense could not pick him up the way they did rookie Jackson Wolf the night before.
Musgrove (9-3, 3.25) paid for most of the mistakes he made.
A slider hung in the first inning was hit by Spencer Torkelson hit into the seats beyond left field, and a cutter near the heart of the strike zone was hit by Andy Ibáñez even farther into those seats in the third inning. The Tigers added on in the third on a pair of singles around a walk.
The loss was Musgrove’s first since May 20, a span of 11 starts in which he has a 2.00 ERA.
Faedo (2-5, 5.80) yielded only Jake Cronenworth’s two-out double in the second inning and four walks.
He perhaps had the good fortune of facing the Padres on this particular day.
They scored 14 runs Saturday.
Of the 24 times this season they have scored at least seven runs, they have now scored one or zero runs in their next game nine times.
Their only run Sunday came in the seventh inning when Bogaerts hit a one-out double and scored on Gary Sánchez’s two-out single against reliever Beau Briskie.
It was arguably their only real threat until the ninth inning. They finished 1-for-4 with runners in scoring position and had just three runners get as far as second base.
Three of Faedo’s walks were to the first batter in an inning, but the Padres grounded into a double play in all three of those innings.
Thus, the Padres never gave themselves a chance to come back from three runs down for a second straight day. Their turning a 3-0 deficit into a 14-3 victory Saturday was just the third time all season they won a game in which they trailed by three runs.
The weather delay that on Saturday got Tigers starter Matt Manning out of the game and seemed to reset the Padres offense did not come Sunday.
Gray clouds moved in early in the afternoon. Comerica Park’s lights were turned on in the third inning. The tarp was uncovered as a precaution in the sixth inning. But unlike Saturday, when a thunderstorm interrupted the second inning for almost 90 minutes, it wasn’t until the Padres were preparing to hit in Sunday’s ninth inning that the skies opened.
After Juan Soto grounded out on the first pitch of the ninth and Manny Machado struck out on three pitches, a bizarre little rally played out in a downpour.
Bogaerts walked, and Cronenworth reached on a mishandled grounder to shortstop Javier Báez before Sánchez skied a fly ball to center field that finally ended the game.
“Our at-bats were better at the end against their plus guys that they bring at the end of the game,” Melvin said. “But for whatever reason, we just did not look like we were quite into it earlier in the game.”
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
